Full Review: Nightmare on Elm St 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

People in the Movie: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Patricia Arquette

Director:  Chuck Russell

Pigeonhole:  horror/ teen slasher

The Basics:  Six years after the first film, Nancy Thompson (Langenkamp) returns to help the “last of the Elm Street children”, the kids of the parents who burned Freddy to death, as they are all in a psychiatric institution for various reasons related to sleep disorders.  Freddy Krueger (Englund) is back (did he ever leave?), killing teenagers in their dreams, and we learn a little more about his personal history, as well.  The bodies pile up, and once again the potential victims fight to stay awake and defeat Freddy before he collects their souls.

Recommendation:  This Nightmare installment gets decent marks for story, casting, special effects, and direction.  A must see for the Nightmare series fan, and horror fans alike.  As a standalone (meaning if you watched this without having seen the prior movies) it can work, nothing takes place that is not otherwise explained.  “R” rating is for violence, language and nudity.

My Take: This installment feels like the true sequel to #1; the story gets back to Freddy being a stalker in kids’ dreams, and Nancy returns to aid a group of teens all in a mental institution stemming from Freddy’s coming after them while they sleep.  This is the film we learn Freddy was the “bastard son of a 100 mad men”, as well.  His mother was a nun who accidentally got locked in a wing of the mental institution for the criminally insane, who was subsequently raped by many of the inmates, and became pregnant.  The ending is decent, and had the series ended here (ha-ha, like that would have happened) it would have felt complete.

 **spoiler alert**  The story opens to a girl named Kristen Parker (Arquette) who we see is crafting a model of Nancy’s old house on Elm Street.  She seems to be fighting to stay awake, but succumbs and enters a bad dream where she approaches the now abandoned Thompson house and encounters a little girl who she enters the house with.  Kristen appears to wake up and she wanders into her bathroom where Freddy now attacks her and cuts her wrist.  Her mother enters the bathroom where the audience sees Kristen holding a razor blade and her wrist is bleeding.  Kristen is sent to Westin Hills for the suicide attempt where she the meets a group of teen patients, who also happen to be slasher movie sterotypes: Joey (a teen who does not speak), Taryn (an ex-drug addict), Kincaid (a street thug type), Jennifer (a wannabe actress who self mutilates), Will (geeky type in a wheelchair) and Phillip (a sculptor/artist who sleep walks).  They are all currently under the care of Dr. Neil Gordon (Craig Wasson) and soon enters Nancy Thompson, the new hire.  Nancy, of course, quickly realizes the teens all have sleep disorders because they are the last of the previously noted “Elm St. children”, and Freddy is stalking them. 

A nice twist in this film, one that I am sure helped to overcome some writing obstacles, is that Kristen is able to pull other sleeping people into her dreams.  It is decided that they (the Elm Street kids) will use this strength to unite against Freddy – hence the title Dream Warriors (although no one ever actually refers to them as such).  This turns out to be futile as Freddy is never hurt in the dream world.  Freddy quickly begins killing the teens one at a time, usually utilizing one victim’s talents or character flaws against them and sometimes delivers a one-liner in the process.  For example, in one particularly disturbing scene, Taryn is cornered in an alley by Freddy where his fingers are now large syringes, and Taryn's track marks now turn into little mouths, she panics, and Freddy OD's her.  The best scene, in my opinion, was where Phillip appeared to be sleepwalking, but the audience sees Freddy using Phillip's veins to pull him like a marionette, before he eventually "jumps" off a building.  This was very much like the scary, intense scenes we loved from the first film.

Freddy is eventually “taken down” this time with the help of a nun who informs Neil of Freddy’s gruesome origin.  Neil is also told by the nun that Freddy’s spirit is restless because he was not buried on hallowed grounds.  So this little subplot leads Neil to Nancy’s father, the police Lt., who continues to remain skeptical about Kruger’s involvement, despite the outcome of the first film.  Lt. Thompson took Freddy’s bones and placed them in a truck of car in a junk yard.  Nancy’s father is subsequently killed while he and Neil are burying Freddy’s skeleton using holy water and a cross (which we see Freddy’s essence come apart and disappear).  The nun who aided Neil is later revealed to have been Freddy’s mother’s ghost, Amanda Krueger, aka Sister Mary Helena.   

Overall, the special effects are much more elaborate, and it works to give the audience more of a scary nightmare-like feel to it.  I like that we see Craven’s “handprints” on this film, although his full screenplay was not used.  I did not feel Nancy needed to die, the way it unfolded did not feel right to me with how the Nightmare series has played out, especially considering her role in the first film.

Final Thought/Extras/For Fun:  The hard rock band Dokken recorded the song “Dream Warriors” specifically for this movie.  This is one of the first times that a rock band recorded a song specifically for a movie, in this fashion … Laurence Fishburne has a minor role in this film as an orderly…